


Crossroads

by chatcolat



Category: Greek and Roman Mythology
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-10
Updated: 2018-01-10
Packaged: 2019-03-03 00:31:36
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 509
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13329699
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/chatcolat/pseuds/chatcolat
Summary: Helen of Troy is creating her own destiny.





	Crossroads

**Author's Note:**

> I'm currently reading The Song of Achilles and while it is truly beautiful, I'm horribly disappointed by lazy depictions of helpless women who are scorned and pitied even by the ever-sympathetic protagonists. So here is Helen having some agency.

The ships had lined the horizon line for days. Sounds of siege and chaos, the great melodies of Ares filled every open space. Helen had never before considered herself fond of the god of war, but now his sacred songs brought her peace. It was just before dawn, the sky turning from blue to a bright red – a storm would be coming. Even the gods could not resist her call to arms. Sacred oaths, sworn over a slaughtered goat or whispered in the dark of night, wove tight bonds. The harder she pulled, the more they tangled, the more they unraveled this unseemly picture the gods had painted.

 

There was a way about their people and this world they had created – dyed red with slaughter, frayed with greed and corruption. Poor Pandora had been conned into weaving this tapestry and now, with all the cunning she possessed, Helen sought to unweave it. Force the gods back from their loom and make them witness their hideous mistake. Their children, her siblings in divinity, were crowded around this small island, scraping and scratching blindly at a hatred they knew not the meaning of.

 

Helen had heard tales of the great Odysseus, favorite of the goddess of war, and his cunning. She heard tales of Achilles, son of a goddess of the sea, promised to be the greatest fighter the world had ever seen. And her own, sweet, naïve Paris, beloved by Aphrodite herself. The more divinity wrapped up on this messy loom the better.

 

Through the sounds of chaos, a faint _drip drip_ echoed from the alter behind her – steady, rhythmic. The beat of a dying man holding tempo for this melody of the dead that echoed through the halls. When a tapestry becomes mangled with tangled threads, you can either undo each strand and carefully weave the design over, or toss it to the pyre with the rubbish. Slower the drips fell until the last drop of blood froze, suspended in the air above the ruined alter. Helen turned.

 

“Is this your means of getting our attention?” Hermes, the god of crossroads, thieves, and messenger to the gods stood before the body of a dead man whose spilled blood on the blossoming amaranths had summoned him. His hands gestured not to the desecration but to the walls, the palace and city, the sea beyond, soaked in the vat of a dye called suffering.

 

Helen smiled. “It seems to have worked. I have a message for you, oh great deliverer. Tell the gods I want an audience with them.”

 

Hermes frowned, a god unaccustomed to mortal scorn – for that’s what she was, _scornful._  “And what on this great earth makes you think the gods will listen to anything you have to say?” It could never be said that Hermes wasn’t the curious sort.

 

“They’re already listening,” Helen replied. Her smile was sharp her eyes burning like the city outside. “This war ends when I say it does. My offer is this: give me home on Olympus, or watch the world burn.”


End file.
